Ordinary diners who take part in our annual survey each spring review restaurants and leave their feedback, but we also ask them to score restaurants from 1-5 on food, service and ambience. Harden’s then uses an average of these scores and measures them against other establishments in the same price bracket to arrive at the ratings published in the guide and online.

Snippets from some of your feedback may end up in the overall Harden’s review, noticeably they appear in “double quotation marks”. The rest of our pithy, bite-sized restaurant summaries are compiled by analysing the survey data and extracting recurring themes, looking at whether or not a venue was nominated in any of our categories – like ‘favourite’ or ‘most overpriced’ – and, of course, looking at the ratings for food, service and ambience.

The Harden’s ratings indicate that a restaurant is:

exceptional very good good average poor

All reviews are compiled from survey comments and ratings, without any regard for our own personal opinions, except in cases where restaurants are too new to have been included in the survey. If you want the editors’ view on new restaurants in London you can find them in our Editors’ Review section.

News

Veteran restaurateur Luke Johnson wants to buy steak chain Gaucho

Veteran restaurateur Luke Johnson, of Pizza Express, The Ivy, Le Caprice and J Sheekey fame, is one of a small number of bidders for steak chain Gaucho, according to Sky News.

The struggling group filed for administration last month and closed all Cau Restaurants, as reported by Harden’s.

The entrepreneur joins American buyout firm Carlyle among the prospective suitors. Deloitte is handling matters currently. A third bidder is thought to be special situations investor Aurelius Equity Opportunities.

Johnson has had prior involvement with Gaucho. Until last November, he sat on the board of the restaurant.